What is this???

[Bento-san]

I originally obtained the first version of this game and am not exactly sure how to put my current thoughts about the changes in the game into words, without receiving a ban or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ as answer.

I am not exactly good in keeping my thoughts for me, if something I bought turns out to be something different. To give you a metaphor here, I wanted to buy the car your offered in the first place and are now looking at a bicycle that doesn't even have wheels yet...

I can imagine why there might have been a change in the setting, after I read about the late happenings in your home country, yet, even though it might sound harsh to put it that way, your personal life should not get in the way of products/work you already are selling. Don't get me wrong here, personally I don't think bad of it, just from the consumers point of view, you betrayed us with this quite a lot.

If there might be some changes within an early access ok, but this current "game" is
1. not what I bought
2. not even something I would call a game yet
3. way to expensive for something to simply look at

I do like the simplistic art style combined with the... let's call it simplistic music in the background. It fits, but that's it.

There is no content in this game at all. There is no goal to achieve and not even the minimum excitement to do somethings necessary to survive is kept alive, ones you figured the mess of basic mechanics we got here.

I tried to let the dogs starve to see how the game will behave. Guess what.... I am still trying... After sleeping 6 days straight they are still perfectly fine, starving... but they don't go lower than 15% health. Same goes for the player character. And best thing, I needed to be awake to lose health.
I don't even need to fish since I can't die. Sleeping does reduce the amount of food you have consumed, but has no impact on health at all.

Could you kindly explain me why I should collect data? All I can do with it is sell it. Seeds... selling or collecting data to sell, Potato...selling, Energy... building and selling... ore - selling and collecting data to sell.

I am at day 9, 2nd play through (or whatever you might call this state), got all bases covered, 2k energy,5k wares left, 200k. All buildings done, Antenna set up... well whatever for.. yeah bases and... more data stuff to sell. Workshop... I can now finally do tests with seeds and ores and... sell the data -.-

Currently I am not even trying to sounds sarcastic or anything, I am simply listing the things I have encountered and been doing so far.

To be honest I had more fun playing Clicker Games, since there is at least some kind of goal, even though it is a total waste of time to achieve.

From what I have seen so far in this game, at least mechanic wise, I could reproduce it using a simple batch file with nothing but " if than else " lines -.-

Again, I do like simplistic games, but this is not even offering some basic tasks to do.

Why would I collect data????
Why would I look for seeds????
Why would I look for ores, if all I need is energy to create wares?

I do appreciate your visual updates and minor corrections, but honestly I've got some free screensavers offering more action to watch. The most amusing part for me was reading about the 9yr old girl asking for some wolves, because the game got boring.

I really would like to know, what you are exactly aiming for with this game. What do you want it to be, what can we expect or wait for?

I mean, you basically fulfilled all things you had in the description. Data collecting in an arctic area and setting up camps. I am pretty sure, the must be thousands of fishes below the ice, that I simply can't see or have all been eaten by the... what was it 20 penguins and 12 walrus?

What I would like to see, would be some kind of mechanic improvement. Why don't you simply add some kind system to analyse the data to get seeds to bewilder the landscape with some trees???? You can still make this a kind of game mode later one, or what ever, but damn, give us at least a reason to play this...

Why do "I" have to collect the energy.... why the heck can I place the battery on the other end of the map and still get a energy bonus, that is working on the entire map.... why would I even need to go to another base and set up a camp there?

This game makes no sense at all.

[Claudio Norori]

Hi Bento!

-We promise we will keep adding motives/goals/ that make the production of data and other resources worth the effort. We are still working every day, every day of the week on Arctico and we do not plan to stop until we feel the game is ready.

-On the survival aspects: no your dogs cannot die on Arctico, the real penaly is the inhability to use your sled while one of the dogs has a low health or requires food/water. And no you cannot die in arctico, the main penaly is that your vision gets affected. This is intentional, we want this game to be a relaxing experience that you can play at your own pace.

-The point you made at the end is 100% valid, we need to make these systems (batteries, etc) more robust and logical.

We will keep adding content and we know the main mechanics of the game need more complexity (things like using the drill or welding hardware), all I can asure you is we will keep doing our best.



thank you for giving us a detailed feedback, this always helps us!

[Bento-san]

Thank you for your response.

Yes, your game is kind of relaxing I will give you that, but it is not very rewarding, which is exactly why things get boring way to fast.
In general, I don't dislike your idea and this setting, but looking at what you are currently doing, I am not expecting any kind of update in the near future, that can hold up to your claims here.

Since you are currently reworking and redesigning an entire game, there is a lot to do, for sure. I can see you are trying hard, since you put a lot of effort into visual results here, but looking at the actual game situation, this is more like a... pre alpha?

I cannot know what you are working on or how you have set up things and work in your location. All I know is the basic order of content creation and the logical ways to set up things. Idea, story board, character design, settings and so on. Looking at the updates, your work areas appear totally unsorted. Why would anyone rework something visual, if the actual use is not set or anywhere near a basic idea?
Sure you need some designs to work with at a later point, but since you already got you style figured out, why would you put so much time into things, which actually are polishing a game instead of developing it?

Design a certain amount of basic structures, which can represent certain items or building of specific categories. Use those as placeholders. What use is the finest redesigned building, if the use case is uncertain or even may change in the developing progress.
Just look at Rimworld for example. I wouldn't exactly call this game best image design and but it is very simplistic, complex and rewarding, well, and frustrating... anyways... content over graphics. This is also one reason, why a lot of people still play very old games.
If your 3d person has nothing to do, why not prepare a few different entrance types like doors... different layout for buttons consoles and so on. You won't need all of it, but you can work more effectively, if there is a kind of storage for general used components.


Another lacking example. Why would I travel back home on a sled all that time? Either I use teleport or simply jump into the water to get ported to base. Since I only lose non cooked food I don't lose anything in most cases. This is working, but not very elegant.

Enable fast travel, capture the current location and start the sled running animation. Either make a center animation around the sled to get the chance for a background change, or zoom and blend out (white... maybe clouds with birds passing by + sounds, just something worth looking at while passing time) to change the location you are filming at and blend in when the sled is about to arrive the new location.
This is visual interesting since it can differ every time. You kill the need to use a game mechanic / exploit since the actual way is way more rewarding. Looking at the current teleport times from base to base, you could even cover some loading time using this, if base building might go overboard on consumer side. 80% of the animation is set already, you just need a general point of view setting + camera motion. With this you could even get ppl set up their bases in a certain way to make their getting home experience even more rewarding. I am mentioning this one, since your Antenna system is one of the few things I enjoyed animation wise and should already work in a similar way.

No one is expecting an AAA title here, even though most of them have been pretty much a disappointment lately anyway. Just work with the stuff you can actually do and build up a solid foundations. You should be able to replace graphics any time, content is a different story.

Define building areas as square frames so you get a better chance to calculate space in the world or for build-in fitments.


Back to the basic thing with food. If I don't die, why do I even have to bother with food?Honestly I didn't even notice much of a difference in the visuals, it got a bit blurry, but that's it.

Let's say you wanna keep that kind of mini realism alive, dogs are solved in a good way with them not moving, but other than that... It simply appears you wanted to use a part of the old systems you used before, but it is not suiting at all in this way.

If you wanna play with this bars anyway, at least use them as indicator when I need to rest. Since I can't die, let us assume I do have some basic equipment that offers me basic food. So let's simply state this as minimum efficiency, which is always available. Getting better food, like fresh fish or plants I have to discover through data collection crossbreeding or whatever, might increase my work efficiency, so I can move faster get more resources or something like this. This should also add a kind of storage to the sled, which should offer a minimum amount of basic food filling up automatically arriving at a base. If not, you will trigger a "oh I forgot my dog food and need to walk home all the way with a blurry image since I can't fish without a spot and/or worms and my dog's won't move an inch." not rewarding! Or at least enable the ice fishing to get food.

Being able / forced to stock up the sled with food instead of having 300 cooked meat in the backpack, makes the player use the available locations like fishing spots, or bases to stock up once you run low on needed stuff. The basic food replenishment secures a positive playing style, since it ensures to at least reach the next fishing spot or hunting spot to get supplies. At least it should, this is something for you to calculate and include into your level design. All players are Idiots, when it comes to following your rules. Look at me, I tried to die several times in your game and make my dogs starve to death. Ok, I even died on purpose in any Tomb Raider, to get to see all of the death animations. Failing can be so rewarding....


I am just tossing some random ideas around here, but I hope you are getting my point of view for solving missing parts or exploits, using a non material rewarding and non punishing method, to reward the player for doing things a certain way. Hopefully I could offer some ideas or starting points.

Good luck with your project.